ukraine

Ukraine is at the center of a complaint made by a whistleblowing intelligence officer who filed the report after learning of a promise President Donald Trump made to a foreign leader, The Washington Post reported Thursday evening.
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The newspaper cited two people familiar with the matter whom it did not name. The Trump administration has withheld the details of the report from Congress; though it was known that the complaint involved a foreign leader, the Post was the first to report the ...

The United States has provided $140 million in "defensive" military equipment to Ukraine as Washington continues to debate whether or not to supply lethal weapons to Kiev, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland said Monday.
The Ukrainian government has been fighting independence supporters in the country's southeast since April 2014. Kiev and its Western allies accuse Russia of providing lethal aid and manpower to pro-independence militias."We provided $1...

Stationing heavy U.S. military equipment in the Baltic states and eastern Europe would amount to "the most aggressive step by the Pentagon and NATO" since the Cold War, Interfax news agency quoted a Russian Defense Ministry official as saying on Monday.
"Russia would be left with no other option but to boost its troops and forces on the western flank," General Yuri Yakubov was quoted as saying.
A U.S. official said at the weekend that Washington planned to store heavy military equipment in...

Barely two days after Europe’s most powerful leaders presented a common front on Russian sanctions, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia swept into Italy on Wednesday, a pointed reminder that European unity against him is fragile and that efforts to isolate him have brought only mixed success.
Mr. Putin has always found a comfort zone in Italy, which has important trade and energy ties to Russia. He began his day in Milan, where he toured Russia’s exhibition at Expo Milano 2015, the world’s fa...

Hundreds of US forces are reportedly located in Ukraine to train the country’s troops on Russia's doorsteps amid growing tensions between Washington and Moscow.
NBC News reported on Sunday that 300 American paratroopers are involved in the direct training that could be seen as a “major provocation” by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The US forces are working with over 700 Ukrainian soldiers in three rotations during the six-month mission that started in April.
"From what we saw at day...

Ukraine and China have signed a currency swap agreement worth $2.4 billion, according to the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU). Ukraine expects it will relieve pressure on its currency which has lost above 40 percent against the US dollar in a year.
The three year agreement was signed in Shanghai by the governor of the National Bank of Ukraine(NBU) Valeria Gontareva and the governor of the People's Bank of China Zhou Xiaochuan, according to NBU’s press release published on Friday.
Ukraine wil...

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Israel against selling arms to the Ukraine in response to Russia's decision to green-light the sale of an advanced missile defense system to Iran. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the deal, saying it would only bolster Iran's regional aggressions.
“It’s the Israeli leadership’s choice. It’s their right to do what they think is appropriate. If (the arms they choose to sell) are lethal weapons, I think it will be counterproductive. It ...

As of this January, U.S. Global Hawk drones have been spotted regularly over the Black Sea, Gen Andrei Kartapolov, Chief of the Main Department for Operations at the Russian General Staff said on Thursday at the 4th Moscow conference on international security.
"And in March 2015, the drones appeared for the first time in the airspace over Ukraine," he said, adding that the utilization of these unmanned aircraft increased the depth of data gathering on the territory of Russia by 250 kilometers...

Russia has threatened to use “nuclear force” to defend its annexation of Crimea and warned that the “same conditions” that prompted it to take military action in Ukraine exist in the three Baltic states, all members of Nato.
According to notes made by an American at a meeting between Russian generals and US officials – and seen by The Times newspaper - Moscow threatened a “spectrum of responses from nuclear to non-military” if Nato moved more forces into Lithuania, Latvia and Esto...